You Am I Review

By Tessa Muskett

The Pink Fits have been around for a long time and have played this stage many times. They have a strong local following and many of the people present were pleased to see them, including the headliner's frontman.

On the other hand, Modular’s latest signing, Tame Impala, are three young men, relatively new to the scene with this being their first show on the UniBar stage. Their music is surprisingly instrumental and subdued but their label mates often complain of the expectations and labels resulting from being signed alongside acts such as Cut Copy and Van She. They look like a generic rock band but their approach is smoother. You won’t find formulaic verse, chorus, verse numbers in Tame Impala’s repertoire. Their first EP, which was largely the sole effort of frontman Kevin Parker, was a hodge podge effort, in a construction sense, belying the seemless product.

You Am I are an Australian institution, if only for a somewhat ‘elite’ audience. As a frontman, Tim Rodgers is perfectly obnoxious. He performed with a semi-affected air of bravado and arrogance that came across more fully in the between song banter which was so amusing the songs came a close second. He asked, ‘Anyone here in ah [checked hand], Wollongong, a fan of the band Venom?’ in a back handed remark with a double slap, as very few people in the crowd reacted and he said, ‘Didn’t think so’.

One particular moment where he embraced the rockstar stereotype, that he has come to symbolize, was when he responded to a particularly vocal crowd member with, ‘I didn’t go to charm school and take all those drugs to be talked at. I demand your adulation. Shut up.’ With an attitude like that, who needs security?

Rogers showed his tongue-in-cheek side at one point making the claim that, ‘This is the best dancing song since…I Don’t Feel Like Dancing by the Scissor Sisters’. This is a testament to the diversity of the band’s sound with songs for the set being drawn from all eras of the band’s career. This is certainly unique as band’s usually ply their most recent material the most heavily, and ostensibly You Am I were on tour in support of their latest release ‘Dilettantes’. You Am I are a band that polarises opinions but their performance on this occasion was undeniably brave and enthralling, regardless of the side you fall onto.